


and yet it moves

by discardable



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discardable/pseuds/discardable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junpei’s dumb jokes baffle Ken and worry Fuuka and make Yukari threaten violence, but Shinjiro never reacts to them at all. They seem to pass through him undisturbed, like a stone into still water, and he finds himself unreasonably angry about it. What lies beneath that unmoving, unyielding exterior? What about him did Minako discover that she could’ve come to love?</p><p>(Junpei, Shinjiro, and bridging the gap after March.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and yet it moves

All those months climbing Tartarus feel like they’ve built to this: one final dash up to the rooftop, two floors instead of two hundred but so much more at stake. Junpei is barely aware of his surroundings, even as the other members of SEES match his pace: his mind is full of _Minako, Minako, Minako_. _Chidori_ beats a frenzied counterpoint, the memories fewer but no less precious, and he’s overwhelmed by the tides of love and loss and the two girls who meant more to him than anything. He’s already lost one, and the thought of losing the other quickens his steps. He almost bowls Ken over as he speeds up, but there’s no time for more than a muttered apology: the boy will still be here in five minutes. His best friend might not.

Akihiko reaches the top first, naturally, and he throws the door open. “Minako?” he calls, and they all pour onto the roof–

Shinjiro looks up, but the noise has barely displaced the grief etched into his face. Their leader is folded up in his arms, tiny and broken and sharply incongruous. Aigis stands off to the side and looks useless, blue eyes deader than he’s ever seen.

“What happened?” Mitsuru is the first to come to her senses, always one to keep a cool head. But her voice betrays her, and Junpei notices her hands are shaking.

Neither Shinjiro or Aigis answers, but they don’t need to. The memory of Minako sacrificing herself to seal Nyx is abruptly at the forefront of his mind, and he suspects it’s the same for everyone else. His desire to lash out at something runs head-first into a heavy finality; as much as he doesn’t want to believe this is real, there’s no other way his leader – hell, his _best friend_ – could’ve been taken from them.

He winds up collapsing onto his knees, the March sunlight suddenly cold, and the rest of SEES folds around him. Around their fearless leader, and the boy she loved and saved and left behind.

After the mourning, it’s abruptly all business. Mitsuru makes a call to the Kirijo Group to arrange for the transportation of the corpse – _Minako_ , he corrects himself sharply. Yukari engages Fuuka in a conversation about the upcoming spring break, even though the tears are still drying on both their faces. Aigis kneels by Koromaru, the dog pushing his snout into her palm as she pats him automatically. Akihiko rests a gloved hand on Ken’s shoulder, offering some reassurance which no doubt falls flat.

That leaves Junpei, and Shinjiro, and the body of the girl they loved cools between them.

It should be easy to go to him. Minako, all smiles and keen intuition, would’ve known what to do. Junpei has prevented the end of the world and opened up about his father and learned to live without Chidori, but he’s not her. Slowly, tentatively, he takes a step closer.

Shinjiro looks up at the sound of his approach, dark eyes hooded. The pain and sorrow and rage there stop him in his tracks, and he flounders. “Go pester someone else.”

The hurt of Chidori has swept back all at once, so he can’t quite say he knows what the older boy is going through when it hasn’t had time to sink in again. But there’s another truth there, one which could help bridge the gap regardless, and he strikes out for it blindly.

“Look, senpai,” Junpei tries. “I know we never talked much, and you probably think I’m just some dumb blabbermouth. But Minako was my best friend, you know? And she really liked you, so… so I’m here if you need anything.”

The only response he gets is a snort, and a deep numbness sinks into him at last. 

*

Shinjiro sticks around afterwards regardless, even though the dorm can’t be the most comfortable place in the world. The memories are one thing, but the way everyone seems to push back their grief just enough to keep an eye on him is quite another. Akihiko hovers awkwardly in his vicinity, clearly holding something back; Mitsuru casts him worried glances when she thinks he’s not looking; even Aigis seems conflicted, at least judging by how she so obviously deliberates about everything. It’s probably no surprise that he spends most of his time either alone or with Koromaru, but even the dog knows that something isn’t quite right.

Junpei’s dumb jokes baffle Ken and worry Fuuka and make Yukari threaten violence, but Shinjiro never reacts to them at all. They seem to pass through him undisturbed, like a stone into still water, and he finds himself unreasonably angry about it. What lies beneath that unmoving, unyielding exterior? What about him did Minako discover that she could’ve come to love?

He reviews what he knows about his reticent senpai: he seems stiff bordering on grumpy and utterly incapable of smiling, but that can’t be the extent of it. Not when Minako chose him over Odagiri from the student council (whose heart she always claimed was in the right place, regardless of the fact he was widely known to be a total hardass), and Ryoji (who would’ve moved mountains for her and her alone, eyes fixed true even as he charmed his way through every girl in their grade), and even, rumour has it, Akihiko (he shudders to think of the backlash from the boxer’s fanclub, which had been bad enough when they just hung out as friends).

What else? He and Akihiko have known each other so long that they’re practically brothers, and it shows. The banquet he cooked for them at the others’ urging was some of the best food he’d eaten in a long while. Koromaru seems to adore him more than anyone in the dorm, even Aigis, and Koro’s a smart enough animal to be able to sort good people from bad. But that doesn’t tell him anything about Shinjiro as a person beyond his relationships and hobbies; Minako helped remind him that a person was more than the sum of their impacts, so he frowns and wracks his brain.

The answer is so obvious, he can hardly believe he missed it: he took a bullet for Ken, even knowing that the boy had shaped his whole life around the desire for revenge. There has to be a deep nobility under the prickliness, but Junpei doesn’t know if he’s the right one to discover it. He wants to know more about the person who won over his best friend so completely: bright, cheerful Minako, incongruous besides the hulking Shinjiro.

He tries not to worry at the problem, but results are mixed.

*

A delicious smell hits Junpei as soon as he opens the front door of the dorm, and he stops dead. There seems to be a gathering of some sort going on in the kitchen, and as tired as he is from being out all day, his natural curiosity gets the best of him.

Fuuka perches on a stool in one corner, frantically taking notes in a small book. Akihiko leans against the countertop, watching with interest. And Shinjiro is bustling around the kitchen, seemingly doing about five things at once. This close to the smell of food, he can’t stop his mouth from watering.

“Yo, senpai. What’s going on here?”

“Shinji’s making dinner,” Akihiko offers gleefully. “For the first time in ages, I should add.”

Well, that’s excellent news, but he’s not sure what brought this on. Getting to eat anyone else’s cooking is a rarity in the dorm, barring Fuuka’s, but as much as she’s improved, he still doesn’t think hers counts.

“Get outta here, Aki,” the cook himself contributes, in the middle of supervising a full stove. “I don’t need a big lump like you getting in my way, especially if you’re going to insist I add protein to everything.”

“But Yamagishi –”

“Is here on chef’s orders,” Junpei interjects, throwing a wink at the girl as he starts dragging his upperclassman away. She tries – and fails – not to look too relieved. “So c’mon, senpai, it’ll be better if we let it be a surprise.”

The hubbub in the kitchen turns out to be a full three-course dinner, including dessert. The dining table groans under the weight of it all, and the excitement in the air is palpable. It tastes incredible, of course, but their resident chef neatly deflects most of the compliments aimed at him. That, too, is exactly as expected.

“So, is there a special occasion?” Mitsuru asks when the meal is over, and Junpei cheers “Speech!”

“Like hell I’m gonna make a speech about it, but… I’ve decided to go back to school,” Shinjiro says in the awkward lull that follows. “I still don’t have much time ahead of me, but I need to live it to the fullest.” _It’s what she’d have wanted_ sits unspoken behind it, heavy in the air. He fiddles awkwardly with his beanie, obscuring his eyes.

The silence after the announcement is deafening, but then relief breaks over the members of SEES like a wave. There’s a sense of unity among them which has been absent for days – no, Junpei corrects himself, since January. Since they forgot.

“Congratulations, senpai,” says Fuuka. “It’s good to see you taking this seriously.”

“I guess you’re not really our senpai any more, though,” Yukari points out. “Maybe we’ll even be in the same homeroom.”

Junpei’s grin is idiotically huge, but he would never even dream of muffling it. Minako would indeed have approved. “Nice one, _Shinji-kun_.” 

“Don’t put me in your league,” Shinjiro grumbles, but there’s no venom behind it at all.

*

The first terrible thing about the semester is that Yukari and Fuuka and Aigis and Kaz and Kenji are all in class 3-A together, and Junpei is stuck in 3-E down the hall. The second terrible thing about the semester is that he’s landed Mr Ekoda as his homeroom teacher, an experience he expects to be roughly comparable to walking barefoot over hot coals even by Gekkoukan standards. And the third terrible thing about the semester is that on the second day of school, when Ekoda inevitably picks him to answer a question, Minako isn’t there to bail him out.

“Iori.” The teacher looms over his desk without warning, and he muffles a yelp. He’d woken up later than he’d intended this morning and been forced to skip breakfast, so his empty stomach has completely ruined his attention span. He’s wide open, and the glint in Ekoda’s eyes says that he knows it too. “Perhaps you’d be able to tell the class the time period from which the Utsubo Monogatari, Japan’s oldest full-length narrative, dates?”

His mind races. The only work in the genre he can remember is the Genji Monogatari, and even then he only remembers the basics forced into him in the last two years. He has to resort to scanning the blackboard for hints, but none are forthcoming. He’s been totally blindsided, and there’s no way out of it. “Uh,” he begins. “Yeah. The Utsubo Monogatari.”

“The late tenth century,” a low voice murmurs behind him. Junpei fights not to turn his head to determine the identity of his mysterious benefactor; he’s been fed enough answers in the past to know not to drag anyone else into it. Instead he simply parrots the information, and hopes like hell that his informant’s been paying more attention than he has.

Minako must be watching over him, because he improbably gets it right. Ekoda’s eyes narrow, but he can’t actually do anything, so he merely stalks back to the front. Finally free of scrutiny, he peeks over his shoulder and inspects his saviour.

The student behind him is unfamiliar, and all he remembers about them is that their seat wasn’t occupied yesterday. But then it clicks: trade the Gekkoukan blazer for a worn red peacoat and perch a beanie on top…

“ _Shinjiro-senpai_?” he hisses. It’s too surreal to see him sitting there, skin ghostly pale against the standard uniform. Part of him entertains the thought that this is a dream, but the pointed glare sent his way destroys any chance of that. Junpei is suddenly aware he spoke far too loudly, and he shrinks in his chair as the curious eyes of his classmates lock onto the pair of them.

Luckily, that’s when the bell rings for lunch break. He spins around instantly; they definitely need to talk about this.

“Thanks for helping me out back there,” he says. “But jeez, I hadn’t picked you for the kind of guy who actually pays attention in class.”

“Well,” he answers, closing his notebook with a thud, “I need to take school more seriously this time around. Helps that I’ve already been through some of the content.”

The self-deprecation in his tone is depressing, so he casts around for a change of subject. Helpfully, one comes up on a whim, and he decides to chase it.

“Eat lunch with me,” he says.

“Here?” Shinjiro is incredulous, and rightly so. In response, he merely dials up his persuasiveness; he’s more than determined to win the other boy over, and nothing gets between Junpei Iori and what he wants.

“Nah,” he says, “on the rooftop. It’ll be way nicer.”

The taller boy still doesn’t seem convinced, so he throws out the bait. The guy’s spent his life going toe-to-toe with Akihiko, so he probably just needs a challenge. “Loser has to share their lunch.”

Then he’s out into the corridor without looking back, and sprinting for his life. He pelts past Yukari, who shouts something indiscernible after him; Fuuka, who almost drops her bento in surprise; Aigis, who placidly advises him not to run in the halls, before he picks up speed again. He’s taking the stairs two at a time and memory is hammering against his ribs, but then he bursts into fresh air.

Tatsumi Port Island is spread out before him like a map, the ocean sparkling blue in the distance. This is the city they fought to save, the people Minako held dear enough to throw herself away for, and pride swells in Junpei’s chest at the sight of it. He leans against the chain-link fence, lacing his fingers through the metal, and only turns around at the sound of the door opening.

Shinjiro is bent double and gasping for breath, but his gaze remains defiant. Which, he decides, needs to be corrected immediately. 

“I win,” Junpei announces victoriously, and plonks himself down. 

“Congratulations,” he answers. It’s punctuated by a violent cough, and he clutches reflexively at his chest. “Must feel good to beat a guy who can barely run.”

“Oh,” he says, “oh _shit_ ,” because he’d completely blanked on the part where his classmate is still recovering from a months-long coma. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to be nice but I screwed up, the others are gonna kill me if they found out I made you strain yourself –”

“You were trying to be nice, but you still sprinted here like a bat outta hell?”

That shuts him up, but at least it doesn’t sound like he’s in for a scolding. “I may have forgotten to bring lunch,” he admits, grinning upwards, “and I’m too broke to buy anything, so I was counting on winning. A man’s gotta go all-out when his stomach’s on the line.”

“Tch.” Shinjiro blows out a noise of irritation, but sits by him regardless. He looks younger out here, unguarded, sunlight smoothing out the lines in his face and the sea breeze ruffling his hair. “You really are an idiot.”

He bites back the obvious _great, now you sound like Yuka-tan_ that springs to his lips, and instead watches him unpack his bento.

“Hey,” he says, “you sure brought a lot of food.”

It’s true. There is beef and rice and tempura and salad, and even those little octopus wieners that Junpei hasn’t had since middle school. Suspicion creeps up on him slowly: sure, someone as ill as his former senpai probably needs to eat a lot to keep up their energy, but does he really need to eat this much? The carefully blank look his counterpart is wearing only fuels him, and he can’t help but air his thoughts.

“I’d say you even brought extra,” he hedges. The skin around Shinjiro’s eyes tightens almost imperceptibly in response, and he breaks out into a grin. “You did, you big softie!”

“Bullshit,” he answers, not even trying to be evasive. The older boy breaks a piece of tempura in half and pops it in his mouth as if to say ‘case closed’, but his opposition won’t be dissuaded that easily.

“Au contraire!” he cries. It’s worryingly easy to imagine Mitsuru wincing at his pronunciation, but his primary concern right now is to get himself fed. “Do mine eyes deceive me, or do I see a second pair of chopsticks?”

He sighs, handing over the offending pieces of cutlery. “Dish up for yourself. No way am I gonna let you share with me like a girl.”

An image rises to mind, unbidden: Minako and Shinjiro sitting together, eating from the bento box balanced across their legs. He aches at the thought for too many reasons, so he falls back on his typical wisecracks. Better to push it away and stay on familiar territory. “I don’t need you, senpai,” he protests, even as he snatches a piece of beef for himself. Unsurprisingly, it’s delicious. “I have all the ramen I could dream of waiting for me back at the dorm.”

“That stuff is total crap and you know it.” The vehemence that creeps into his tone is unexpected, and Junpei prepares for the riposte – but then everything crystallises perfectly. He’s not as intuitive as most of the people he hangs out with, but in that instant, he thinks he understands.

“You really are just like a big brother, huh? Minako was lucky to have you.”

His companion freezes, and the moment seems to stretch on infinitely. Voices drift up to them from the courtyard below as students relax in the warm spring air. The sun gleams off a monorail in the distance as it executes a slow, lazy turn. Minako’s body cools anew on the rooftop and Junpei waits, petrified.

“Nah,” he says. “Definitely the other way around.”

Shinjiro Aragaki smiles, and the world begins to turn again.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got 99 problems and my Shinjiro feelings are about 90 of them.  
> (Sorry if this was messy, it's really late where I am.)


End file.
